National Action Party

Founded in 1939 by Manuel Gómez Morán, the National Action Party
(Partido de Acción Nacional--PAN) was the first genuine opposition
party to develop in Mexico. The PAN emerged as a conservative reaction
against the nationalizations and land confiscations undertaken by the Cárdenas
government during the 1930s. The PAN resembled a standard Christian
Democratic party, and its early support derived primarily from the Roman
Catholic Church, the business sector, and other groups alienated by the
left-wing populist reforms of the Cárdenas government. Although the PAN
is much more conservative than the PRI on social issues, since the
mid-1980s the PAN's economic program has been almost indistinguishable
from that of the PRI governments it has attempted to supplant.

The PAN has traditionally favored a limited role of the government in
the economy, an orientation that has been adopted by the PRI during the
past fifteen years under presidents de la Madrid, Salinas, and Zedillo.
Historically, the PAN also has campaigned in favor of a breakup of the
communal ejidos into individually owned plots of land. In 1992
the Salinas administration introduced radical reforms to the land tenure
law that allowed ejidatarios to sell their plots and to
consolidate their holdings (see Rural Society, ch. 2). This convergence
of PRI and PAN economic programs encouraged the PAN congressional
delegation to work closely with the Salinas administration to pass the
government's sweeping economic reforms. In an effort to distance itself
from the PRI, in the mid-1990s, the PAN has stressed issues such as the
need for democratization, eradication of government corruption, and
additional electoral reforms.

Traditionally, the PAN has had strong support in the country's
wealthiest and most urbanized regions of the north and center,
particularly in the Federal District, Jalisco, Nuevo León, Puebla, and
Sonora. The effects of PAN victories in the northern part of the country
since the 1980s are highly significant, particularly in the states of
Baja California Norte, Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, and
Sonora. The PAN has also displayed political strength in the states of
Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Yucatán. The PAN won the governorships and
congressional majorities in Baja California Norte and Chihuahua during
the Salinas administration, and the local congress in the state of
Guanajuato gave a third governorship to the PAN after a state election
had been plagued with irregularities. The PAN's major handicap has been
its lack of appeal to urban labor and peasant groups.

The PAN has presented a candidate in every presidential race since
1946 with the exception of 1976, when its leadership could not reach
consensus on a candidate. It has always been the main opposition to the
PRI, although in the 1988 presidential election its presidential
candidate, Manuel Clouthier, ran third to Salinas and Cárdenas. By 1992
the PAN controlled more than 100 municipal governments in addition to
the three governorships. With Diego Fernández de Cevallos as its
candidate and "por un México sin mentiras" ("for a
Mexico without lies") as its campaign slogan, the PAN won a
comfortable second place in the 1994 presidential race. The second-place
win consolidated the PAN's role as the main opposition political force
in the country.